Symbiosis
by Fierceawakening
Summary: Megatron and Starscream, fighting the last battle for Vos, and realizing both what they're losing and becoming. I don't like Megatron's original alt, but... sometimes it just works.


Below him, his city burned.

If it had been anywhere else - _anywhere else_, not just his enemy Tarn, or the arrogant domes of Iacon, but anywhere, even someplace like Altihex or Praxus where no one had done a thing to him and his kind - Starscream would have called it beautiful.

His warriors flew a dance of death. His allies, risen from the Badlands and from Kaon, already said to be the mouth of the Pit itself, tore everything on the ground to twisted scrap, their cannons and lasers setting it all ablaze in flame.

It would have been perfect.

But it was Vos that burned.

His spark crackled with fury as he roared through the sky, always the fastest, always the brightest, always the best, always far, far beyond where any other could touch him.

He felt heat against his underside, a hum of fierce, barely contained energy crackling through the weapon mounted there. It echoed his indignation, his rage at this destruction.

They could have spoken to one another. Transformation did nothing to prevent that. But they'd said everything they needed to before they'd taken these forms. Before they'd folded in upon themselves, one becoming a weapon so that the other could wield it.

Starscream deserved at least that now. To soar high above the battlefield, raining revenge and death and destruction down on the ones who would dare to desecrate his home, his greatest ally now his greatest weapon.

"This is sacrilege," the silver mech had said, before this last and desperate flight. He'd stared out over the destruction, his faceplates gleaming orange-red in the light of the flames.

"Sacrilege, Megatron?" Vos was Starscream's home, the home of his many wings of warriors. Of course this would appall him. But a mech like Megatron cared for his own before all others. Even his allies. "You yourself wanted war."

"I wanted war, yes," the big mech had answered, clenching a dark fist, looking out as spires toppled, wreathed in flame, crashing to the scorched ground. "But Vos was the last place on this world worth preserving. They have destroyed everything our world has ever been."

He had turned, his optics burning as bright as the conflagration building around them. "They seek to destroy those terrible enough to recreate it. The dangerous. The cunning. The vicious. The strong. But it will not happen. They will be consumed."

_They will be consumed. _Starscream's spark had sung with it, and with the praise it implied.

It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. Even if they won this day, the towers soaring into Cybertron's skies were cracked or broken or downed entirely. Vos had already become a ruin, and it would be long vorns before any resources could be devoted to rebuilding. For now, there was only war.

And to that end - this.

Starscream sped toward the center of the city, high above even his own warriors, through smoke and ever-rising flame.

And there, above it all, stood the last and highest of the city's towers, the home of the Winglord himself.

His home. His palace. Symbol of his might. Greatest jewel in the crown of Cybertron.

The only thing worth preserving, soon to fall to grasping and unworthy enemies who understood nothing.

He felt a hum beneath him, and knew that both he and Megatron shared the same thought: _If it must fall, it will not fall to them._

Disgust coursing through his systems like a virus, he lined himself up with the window of his palace.

"Now," he whispered, struggling to keep his engines from stalling as they choked out his despair. He should have cried out, shrieked it loud enough for Megatron to hear.

It didn't matter. He heard the low whine of the cannon charging, felt the burn of the gathering energy.

Then the bolt of lavender energy burst free, speeding toward the one place on the planet he had truly made his own.

Then everything was swallowed in a flare of purple light so bright his optical feed flickered with static from the exposure. The sound filled his audio receptors, and his spark pulsed, hidden at the center of his form, hideously overfull.

_So this is regret,_ he thought with a peal of laughter, wild and mad.

Megatron was warm below him, the air around him still crackling with ozone like the first hints of a lightning storm.

"Everything burns," Megatron said. "Everything."

Starscream's engines whined. Who did Megatron think he was, deciding how this battle should be fought? He knew very well that Megatron hadn't proposed this alliance intending to treat him as an equal forever. But for one thing, he had his own ideas about that - and, for another, this battle was his.

"Everything burns," he repeated. Those words - as irritated as he was with Megatron, they could have come from him. His spark crackled with energy, and the living metal against him had grown hot again, as if in response.

It unnerved him. He was the Winglord of Vos, and held no others above himself. No bonds connected him to the rest of the world, except for ever-shifting alliances that, until now, had kept Vos a city apart, untouched by the petty power grabs of all the other cities on the planet. Starscream's counsel was his own, and even if any other mech had known his plans, he could never have untangled them anyway.

And here Megatron was, not bothering with any attempt to understand him at all, speaking the things _he _felt, giving voice to what _he _wanted, to the reckoning _he _sought to call down from _his _skies...

It was an affront. An affront that Megatron would pay for, someday, somehow, despite all of this, despite Megatron bringing his armies to Vos's defense - and, now that the end had come, to its revenge.

_And yet, _Starscream thought, _he allows me to wield him. To carry him. To choose, for the moment, what he destroys._

_Blind fool. Of all the beings in the galaxy, why choose to trust _me?

Feeling the silent weight attached to him, the shared wrath as it warmed, and fired, and warmed again, he remembered the answer the other had given.

_They have destroyed everything our world has ever been._

_They seek to destroy those terrible enough to recreate it._

_Those terrible enough to recreate it..._

Starscream's engines roared and he gave a high cry.

_Everything burns._


End file.
